The Undershirt Cut From a Single Piece, Never Sewn Shut

The sudreh is a plain white cotton undershirt worn next to the skin by initiated Zoroastrians, layered beneath ordinary clothing rather than shown. It is cut sleeveless, from a single piece of cloth, and reaches to the hip. Its most distinctive feature is a small triangular pouch sewn at the front neckline, the girehban, taught in most communities as the symbolic purse in which a person gathers the merit of good thoughts, words and deeds across a life, to be opened at the reckoning after death. White is not decorative; it is functional, because an unbleached or lightly bleached cloth shows a stain, and the garment is meant to register the wearer's conduct rather than disguise it.

Devotional teaching in several Zoroastrian communities counts nine seams in the traditional cut and links them to core ethical formulas of the faith, though the correspondence is taught with real local variation rather than fixed once for all by scripture, and Boyce's survey of Zoroastrian practice records the diversity of that catechesis rather than a single authorized reading. The garment is replaced when worn out, never simply discarded, and older sudrehs are usually buried or given a respectful private disposal.